The Choice We Face Read online

  32. Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237 (1991); Clotfelter, After Brown, 196–98; Orfield, Schools More Separate.

  33. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. no. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007); Ansley Erickson, “The Rhetoric of Choice: Segregation, Desegregation, and Charter Schools,” in Public Education Under Siege, ed. Michael Katz and Mike Rose (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 122–30.

  34. Scott, “School Choice as a Civil Right,” 44.

  35. Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Jia Wang, and Gary Orfield, Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards (Los Angeles: Civil Rights Project, 2010), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4r07q8kg.

  36. Ivan Moreno, “US Charter Schools Put Growing Numbers in Racial Isolation,” Associated Press, December 3, 2017, https://apnews.com/e9c25534dfd44851a5e56bd57454b4f5.

  37. Nikole Hannah-Jones, interview with Chris Hayes, “Why Is This Happening?” NBC News, July 31, 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/investigating-school-segregation-2018-nikole-hannah-jones-podcast-transcript-ncna896116.

  38. W. E. B. DuBois, “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?,” Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (July 1935): 328–29.

  39. Moreno, “US Charter Schools Put Growing Numbers in Racial Isolation.”

  40. Cardell Orrin, interview with the author, November 21, 2019.

  41. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 100; Barber, “Never Stop Working,” 28–34; Benson, Fighting for Our Place in the Sun, 85–96.

  42. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 158–59.

  43. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 156–59, 165–72; Dougherty, More Than One Struggle, 172–76.

  44. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 173; Barber, “Never Stop Working,” 50–61.

  45. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 156–59, 165–72.

  46. Dougherty, More Than One Struggle, 176–78.

  47. Derrick Bell, “A Model Alternative Desegregation Plan,” in Shades of Brown: New Perspectives on School Desegregation, ed. Derrick Bell (New York: Teachers College Press, 1980), 124–39; Dougherty, More Than One Struggle, 178.

  48. Robin D. Barnes, “Black America and School Choice: Charting a New Course,” Yale Law Journal 106 (1997): 2405, 2409, https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7768&context=ylj.

  49. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 173.

  50. Derrick Bell, “The Case for a Separate Black School System,” Urban League Review 11, nos. 1–2 (Summer–Winter 1987–88): 136; Rogers Worthington, “Milwaukee Challenges Black District Plan,” Chicago Tribune, September 29, 1987; Frederick Hess, Revolution at the Margins: The Impact of Competition on Urban School Systems (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002), 79; Dougherty, More Than One Struggle, 189–90; Barbara Miner, Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City (New York: New Press, 2013), 134–37.

  51. Bell, “The Case for a Separate Black School System,” 136–45. See also Derrick Bell, “The Case for a Separate Black School System,” chap. 13 in Black Education: A Quest for Equity and Excellence, ed. Willy DeMarcell Smith and Eva Wells Chunn (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991).

  52. Bell, “The Case for a Separate Black School System,” 140

  53. Bell, “The Case for a Separate Black School System,” 140.

  54. “Blacks, Whites Criticize School Resegregation Idea,” Milwaukee Journal, August 12, 1987; Miner, Lessons from the Heartland, 135–37; Kenneth R. Lamke, “Thompson Backs Inner City District,” Milwaukee Sentinel, September 2, 1987; Chester Sheard, “Langley Says Inner City District Illegal,” Milwaukee Sentinel, September 28, 1987; Chester Sheard, “NAACP Aide Calls Black School District ‘Urban Apartheid,’“ Milwaukee Sentinel, September 26, 1987.

  55. Fuller quoted in Kenneth R. Lamke, “Fuller Defends Plan for Inner City District,” Milwaukee Sentinel, August 15, 1987; Miner, Lessons from the Heartland, 135.

  56. Bell, “The Case for a Separate Black School System,” 140.

  57. Miner, Lessons from the Heartland, 135–37; Polly Williams, interview with Jack Dougherty, July 23, 1996, “More Than One Struggle Oral History Project,” Box 2, Folder 31, Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

  58. Rogers Worthington, “Milwaukee Challenges Black District Plan” Chicago Tribune, September 29, 1987; Frederick Hess, Revolution at the Margins: The Impact of Competition on Urban School Systems (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002), 79; Dougherty, More Than One Struggle, 189–90; Miner, Lessons from the Heartland, 136–37.

  59. Williams quoted in Dougherty, More Than One Struggle, 186.

  60. Frederick Hess, Revolution at the Margins: The Impact of Competition on Urban School Systems (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002), 72–136; Gary R. George and Walter C. Farrell Jr., “School Choice and African American Students: A Legislative View,” Journal of Negro Education 59, no. 4 (Autumn 1990): 521–25.

  61. Carl, Freedom of Choice, 100–102.

  62. Polly A. Williams, “Education Is Not Just for the Privileged Few,” Education Week, February 7, 1996, 41–42; Dougherty, More Than One Struggle, 186–90.

  63. Fuller quoted in Barber, “Never Stop Working,” 76 n268. See also Bill Dahlk, Against the Wind: African Americans and the Schools in Milwaukee (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2010), 521.

  64. “Just as Bad as Expected,” Commercial Appeal (Memphis), January 12, 2011; Jane Roberts, “‘Huge’ Gates Grant—Memphis City Schools One of Four Systems in Nation Chosen for Gates Foundation Funds to Improve Teaching,” Commercial Appeal, November 19, 2009; Grace Tatter, “As Tennessee Finishes Its Race to the Top, Teachers Caught in the Middle of Competing Changes,” Chalkbeat, December 15, 2015, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2015/12/15/as-tennessee-finishes-its-race-to-the-top-teachers-caught-in-the-middle-of-competing-changes; Juli Kim, Tim Field, and Elaine Hargrave, The Achievement School District: Lessons from Tennessee (Chapel Hill, NC: Public.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Achievement_School_District_Lessons_From_Tennesee-Public_Impact.pdf; Laura Faith Kebede, “NAACP to Put Memphis in Spotlight in National Debate over Charter Schools,” Chalkbeat, January 9, 2017, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2017/01/09/naacp-to-put-memphis-in-spotlight-in-national-debate-over-charter-schools.

  65. Jane Roberts, “State to Intervene in Running 6 MCS Schools,” Commercial Appeal, February 28, 2012; Climbing Out from Under the Rock: Restoring Civil Rights, Economics, and School Justice in Memphis and the Nation, 4th ed., Hooks Policy Papers (Memphis: University of Memphis, 2018), https://www.memphis.edu/benhooks/pdfs/2018policypapers.pdf.

  66. Stephanie Love, interview with the author, November 22, 2019.

  67. Jane Roberts, “Charter System Has New Leader” Commercial Appeal, May 10, 2011; Jane Roberts, “Charters Lure Outside Interest—Highly Regarded Systems in California Apply for Memphis,” Commercial Appeal, April 4, 2012.

  68. Jane Roberts, “Chartered Course—Underachieving Lest School in Hands of Faith-Based Overseer,” Commercial Appeal, March 13, 2012.

  69. Jane Roberts, “State to Intervene in Running 6 MCS Schools” Commercial Appeal, February 28, 2012.

  70. Kriner Cash, “Transforming MCS Is a Community Effort,” Commercial Appeal, April 10, 2010.

  71. Zandria F. Robinson, “After Stax: Race, Sound, and Neighborhood Revitalization,” in An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee, ed. Aram Goudsouzian and Charles McKinney Jr. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018), 348–65. For more on Maxine Smith STEAM Academy, see https://www.memphissteamacademy.org; on the Soulsville Foundation and the Soulsville Charter School, see https://soulsvillefoundation.org/our-work.

  72. For more on Martin Luther King, Jr. College Preparatory, see http://fraysercs.org/mlk-prep.

  73. Jane Roberts, “Cultural Empowerment,” Commercial Appeal, April 27, 2014.

  74. Shirletta Kinchen, B
lack Power in the Bluff City: African American Youth and Student Activism in Memphis, 1965–1975 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2016).

  75. Robinson, “After Stax,” 348–65.

  76. Stephanie Love, interview; Jane Roberts, “Schools Need Hands—Involvement Urged from the Community,” Commercial Appeal, April 13, 2012; “Dr. Bobby White, Founder & CEO,” Frayser Community Schools, http://fraysercs.org/team/bobby-white.

  77. Amadou Diallo, “Segregated Schools Are Still the Norm. Howard Fuller Is Fine with That,” Hechinger Report, November 16, 2018, https://hechingerreport.org/segregated-schools-are-still-the-norm-howard-fuller-is-fine-with-that; National Charter Collaborative, http://www.chartercollab.org/ncchome.

  78. LaTricea Adams, interview with the author, November 22, 2019.

  79. Cardell Orrin, interview with the author, November 21, 2019.

  80. Roblin Webb, interview with the author, November 27, 2019.

  81. NAACP, “Statement Regarding the NAACP’s Resolution on a Moratorium on Charter Schools,” October 15, 2016, https://www.naacp.org/latest/statement-regarding-naacps-resolution-moratorium-charter-schools.

  82. Kimberly Hefling, “NAACP President Tackles Charter School Question,” Politico, July 12, 2018, https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/12/naacp-president-charter-schools-derrick-johnson-676432.

  83. Matt Barnum, “6 Problems the NAACP Has with Charter Schools—and 5 of Its Ideas for How to Reshape the Sector,” Chalkbeat, July 27, 2017, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/07/27/6-problems-the-naacp-has-with-charter-schools-and-5-of-its-ideas-for-how-to-reshape-the-sector.

  84. Marc Curnutte, “Local Group Interrupts Ohio NAACP meeting,” Commercial Appeal, October 16, 2016; Jennifer Pignolet, “Memphis Lift Group Draws Praise—Local NAACP President Cheers Actions at Meeting,” Commercial Appeal, October 19, 2016; Mark Curnutte, “Memphis Group Interrupts NAACP Meeting in Cincinnati,” Cincinnati Enquirer, October 15, 2016.

  85. Curnutte, “Local Group Interrupts Ohio NAACP Meeting.”

  86. Pignolet, “Memphis Lift Group Draws Praise.”

  87. Jennifer Pignolet, “Memphis NAACP Steers Charter Policy—Organization Refines Policy, with Aid from Area Branch,” Commercial Appeal, July 30, 2017; Laura Faith Kebede, “Five Takeaways from the NAACP’s Charter School Hearing in Memphis,” Chalkbeat, January 9, 2017, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2017/01/11/five-takeaways-from-the-naacps-charter-school-hearing-in-memphis.

  88. Pignolet, “Memphis Lift Group Draws Praise”; Jennifer Pignolet, “Memphis NAACP Steers Charter Policy”; Stephanie Love interview.

  89. Carpenter quoted in Ira Stoll, “Meet the Memphis Great-Grandmother Who Confronted Elizabeth Warren About School Choice,” EducationNext, December 5, 2019, https://www.educationnext.org/meet-memphis-great-grandmother-who-confronted-elizabeth-warren-school-choice-sarah-carpenter.

  90. Cheyenne Haslett and Sasha Pezenik, “Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren Delivers Speech on Black Women Workers’ Rights; Interrupted by Pro-Charter School Protesters,” ABCNews.com, November 22, 2019, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/presidential-candidate-elizabeth-warren-deliver-speech-centered-Black/story?id=67178918.

  91. Morgan Phillips, “Trump Calls School Choice the Civil Rights Issue of ‘All-Time’ in This Country,” Fox News, June 16, 2020.

  92. Lauren Camera, “Cory Booker’s School Choice Dilemma,” U.S. News and World Report, October 24, 2019, https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2019–10–24/cory-bookers-school-choice-dilemma.

  93. Pignolet, “Memphis Lift Group Draws Praise.”

  94. Stephanie Love interview.

  95. Chester E. Finn Jr., We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future (New York: Free Press, 1991), xiv–xv.

  96. Finn, We Must Take Charge, 245–51.

  97. Erickson, “The Rhetoric of Choice.”

  98. Pamela N. Frazier-Anderson, “Public Schooling in Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans: Are Charter Schools the Solution or Part of the Problem?,” Journal of African American History 93, no. 3 (Summer 2008): 413; Raynard Sanders, David Stovall, and Terrenda White, Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools: The Impact of Charters on Public Education (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018), 8–16.

  99. Raynard Sanders, “The New Orleans Public Education Experiment: Children Lose—Education Reformers Win,” in Sanders, Stovall, and White, Twenty-First Century Jim Crow Schools, 8–16; Kim Holmes and Stuart Butler, “From Tragedy to Triumph: Principled Solutions for Rebuilding Lives and Communities,” Heritage Foundation, September 12, 2005, https://www.heritage.org/homeland-security/report/tragedy-triumph-principled-solutions-rebuilding-lives-and-communities; Robert P. Stoker and Michael J. Rich, Lessons and Limits: Tax Incentives and Rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Katrina (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2006), https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/20060808_GOZones.pdf.

  100. Sanders, “The New Orleans Public Education Experiment,” 8–16; Douglas N. Harris, Charter School City: What the End of Traditional Public Schools in New Orleans Means for American Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).

  101. Mary Moran, “Howard Fuller Explains What’s Happening in New Orleans,” Education Post, August 7, 2015, https://educationpost.org/howard-fuller-explains-whats-happening-in-new-orleans; Thomas C. Pedroni, Market Movements: African American Involvement in Voucher Reform (New York: Routledge, 2007), 4, 51–69.

  102. Howard Fuller, interview with the author, November 25, 2019; Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 273. See also Black Education for New Orleans, https://Blackedunola.org/howard-fuller.

  103. Sanders, “The New Orleans Public Education Experiment,” 3; Harris, Charter School City.

  104. Howard Fuller, interview with the author, November 25, 2019.

  105. Howard Fuller, “74 Interview: Howard Fuller on Schooling Elizabeth Warren About Charters, African-American Families, School Choice and Her Education Plan,” 74, December 5, 2019, https://www.the74million.org/article/74-interview-howard-fuller-on-schooling-elizabeth-warren-about-charters-african-american-families-school-choice-her-education-plan.

  106. Howard Fuller, interview with the author, June 26, 2019.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE SINKING SHIP OF PUBLIC EDUCATION AND THE FAILURE OF CHOICE

  1. Friedman and Friedman, Two Lucky People, 350.

  2. Cal Thomas, “Friedman’s Greatest Legacy: School Choice?,” Real Clear Politics, November 22, 2006, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/11/the_other_milton_friedman.html.

  3. James Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Williams, Self-Taught; Christopher Span, From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse: African American Education in Mississippi, 1862–1875 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

  4. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?,” Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (July 1935): 328–29.

  5. Gary Orfield and Jongyeon Ee, “Our Segregated Capital: An Increasingly Diverse City with Racially Polarized Schools,” Civil Rights Project, February 9, 2017, https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/; Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce, “Charter Schools in Chicago: No Model for Education Reform,” Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository, 2016, https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/; “Study: Charter Schools Have Worsened School Segregation” Chicago Sun-Times, October 13, 2014; Suchi Saxena, “New York City Public Schools: Small Steps in the Biggest District,” Century Foundation, October 14, 2016, https://tcf.org/content/report/new-york-city-public-schools; New York City Charter School Center, “NYC Charter School Facts,” https://www.nyccharterschools.org/sites/default/files/resources/NYC-Charter-Facts.pdf.

  6. “Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards,” Civil Rights Project, https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu. For a larger historical context, see Gary Orfield, Schools More Separate: Consequences of a Decade of Resegregation (Cambridg
e, MA: Harvard Civil Rights Project, 2001), 5–6, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED459217.pdf.

  7. Pamela Grundy, Color and Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); Helen F. Ladd, Charles T. Clotfelter, and John B. Holbein, “The Growing Segmentation of the Charter School Sector in North Carolina,” Education Finance and Policy 12, no. 4 (Fall 2017): 24; Kris Nordstrom, Stymied by Segregation: How Integration Can Transform North Carolina Schools and the Lives of Its Students (Raleigh: North Carolina Justice Center, 2018), https://media2.newsobserver.com/content/media/2018/3/15/STYMIED%20BY%20SEGREGATION%20-%20Integration%20can%20Transform%20NC-FINAL.PDF.

  8. Matthew Gonzales, “The IPS Magnet School Conundrum,” Indianapolis Monthly, February 8, 2018, https://www.indianapolismonthly.com/news-and-opinion/news/the-ips-magnet-school-conundrum.

  9. Nikole Hannah-Jones with Dianna Douglass, “Are Private Schools Immoral? A Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones about Race, Education, and Hypocrisy,” Atlantic, December 14, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/12/progressives-are-undermining-public-schools/548084.

  10. Caroline Bauman, “Memphis-Shelby County Spotlighted in National Report on School District Secession,” Chalkbeat, June 21, 2017, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2017/06/21/memphis-shelby-county-spotlighted-in-national-report-on-school-district-secession; EdBuild, “Fractured: The Accelerating Breakdown of America’s School Districts,” 2019, https://edbuild.org/content/fractured.

  11. Caroline Bauman, “Memphis-Shelby County Spotlighted in National Report on School District Secession,” Chalkbeat, June 21, 2017, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2017/06/21/memphis-shelby-county-spotlighted-in-national-report-on-school-district-secession; Laura Faith Kebede, “Budget Cuts Loom for Shelby County Schools, Again—Here’s What We Know,” Chalkbeat, April 5, 2016, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2016/04/05/budget-cuts-loom-for-shelby-county-schools-again-heres-what-we-know; Caroline Bauman, “Low Enrollment a Telltale for Closing Memphis Schools. Here’s What the Numbers Show,” Chalkbeat, November 2, 2016, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2016/11E/02/low-enrollment-a-telltale-for-closing-memphis-schools-heres-what-the-numbers-show; Micaela Watts, “For a Second Year, Layoffs Impact About 500 Shelby County Educators,” Chalkbeat, May 27, 2016, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2016/05/27/for-a-second-year-layoffs-impact-about-500-shelby-county-educators; EdBuild, “Fractured.”